A recent study commission by the Consumers Federation of Kenya (COFEK) and conducted by India based independent audit company revealed that Telkom Orange has the best voice quality, 2G and 3G data speeds while Safaricom has the widest coverage. Airtel and Yu fared lower as compared to Orange and Safaricom on voice and data speeds.

The study looked at all four mobile service providers and compared their services in terms of outdoor coverage, indoor coverage, voice quality, 2G data speeds and 3G data speeds.

Safaricom was recognized as having the widest indoor and outdoor coverage; with Yu having better outdoor coverage in Nairobi but poor indoor coverage. The report recommended that Airtel and Orange need to improve outdoor coverage by optimizing existing sites.

The report further revealed that all four operators have acceptable voice quality scores from a customer perception point of view; they are though not acceptable for the amount of spectrum that is allocated for all operators.

2G data speed analysis recommended that Yu and Safaricom 2G data speeds need to improve. Orange 2G data had the highest throughput (Kbps), the amount of data that actually gets transmitted from your computer, through the internet to the web server and back in a single unite of time, as compared to the other networks. Airtel 2G data service faced a lot of errors and hence results were not reliable enough to be included.

The report further revealed that 3G data speeds for all operators is lower than most 3G networks globally. Data pocket session activation delay is high for all operators. The delay is the time it takes for the network to activate a data session.

In comparison to global benchmarks, Orange was the only service provider that is among the top 20 percent networks for voice performance. Safaricom and Airtel have above average voice performance while Yu voice performance is below global average. Airtel and Yu have poor voice quality as compared to global networks while all networks except Safaricom have coverage issues.

As posted in capitalfm.co.ke, COFEK Secretary General Stephen Mutoro said, “Consumers are already paying a lot of money for poor services. It seems like mobile service operators are not reinvesting in their infrastructure and that is a crisis of some sorts.”

He further noted that mobile service providers often give misleading advertisements particularly on the tariffs offered that are meant to be permanent but change every three months.